


You've a massive heart

by ParadifeLoft



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Losgar is never an appropriate conversation topic, M/M, Nargothrond, headcanon; headcanon everywhere!, warning: description of being triggered/panicking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 12:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edrahil has Fëanorian issues. So does Celebrimbor. They don't really make it work. Or: Edrahil sort of gets it. But only sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've a massive heart

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this ship even came from. None. I'm not even sure it's really even exactly a "ship". It just sort of showed up and ate my brain. In other news, this should probably go in the series with the rest of my Fëanorians-are-a-trainwreck fic just looking at thematic material, but it's too long for that. Ah well.

A knock at the door comes when Celebrimbor is, as far as he is aware, the only one present inside the entire small wing of quarters given to his family. He hopes, _hopes_ this will not be that group of his father’s lords wanting more land allotted their people’s farms, or worse, one of the Arafinwean lords complaining after his uncle again. 

But when he answers the door, it is neither. It is rather, one of Findaráto’s close councilors, one of his cousin’s friends. Edrahil, he’s heard him called. 

The other elf, for his part, looks almost startled and confused to see him. But the flash of emotion disappears quick as it arrived, and he fixes Celebrimbor with a cool-eyed stare. “Is the king here?” he asks. There is a touch of distaste in the words. 

Celebrimbor only shakes his head, mildly confused himself now. 

“Do you know where he might have gone?” 

Wouldn’t Edrahil himself know better than Celebrimbor would, where Findaráto had gotten to? “Apologies, my lord… I haven’t seen him at all today.” 

Edrahil’s lips press thinly together, and he glances behind Celebrimbor. “He had mentioned earlier something about intending to speak with your father.” 

“Ah. I haven’t seen either of them,” he repeats. No wonder the sour look on his face, though. Celebrimbor remembers the way, when they had arrived here, Edrahil had thought to remind his king of the antipathy many of his people still bore them, had tensed and shifted closer to Finrod when his father had spoken. It was the kind of look he’d seen from several of his uncles before, too. 

A noise of acknowledgement, though Edrahil does not look entirely pleased with the news. “Hmm. Excuse my interruption, then,” he says, with a small incline of his head. 

Celebrimbor watches after him while he leaves, before returning to his blade designs. 

\---- 

His father spares no words at all letting him know of the inadequacies and incompetencies of his fellows - ( _I expect better of you; do not make these mistakes I see in others_ , lingers behind the meanings voiced aloud). The corridor is otherwise empty, but it is still a corridor. 

Celebrimbor feels a sick hard pit in the bottom of his stomach and wants to curl away and fade into nothingness. 

He holds his features still like muscles as iron cooling and his face aches like his chest does, but he manages a _yes, of course_ at the appropriate moments somehow anyway. 

The footsteps, he barely even notices, or - barely _registers_ , not notices, he notices them perfectly fine - until they become a voice, surface politeness with ice gathering in the cracks, Quenya-accented Sindarin, "My lord, if I may borrow Celebrimbor to discuss our outstanding weapons commissions." 

He allows himself to be pulled away (easier than to say he simply followed, of his own volition; at least this way the relief is uncomplicated). And when they are turned the corner, stalled leaning against carved stone that recalled the silhouette of Tirion as looked upon from the north, he inquires as to the commissions, if there are any problems he needs to see to. 

But Edrahil only curls his lip (a spike of panic runs through Celebrimbor; surely he's done something terrible and the entire order has been ruined). "There was not truly anything I had to say. Your work is nothing short of genius and I cannot think of any criticism that might be offered in good faith." (The words are Quenya.) 

Celebrimbor takes the praise, takes rather in the manner of one receiving back an evaluation and stuffing it immediately away before even hazarding a look. He might blame the anxiety, rolling against the inside of his ribcage like clouds of deep black smoke. But either way. He mostly nods, a little bit of confusion, a little dazed. He asks his leave, and Edrahil allows it, with a few more short words from his mouth, harsh and cold like the stone of the walls. (A thought flutters through the tangle of Celebrimbor's mind, wondering what those same hard, unforgiving lips might feel like against his throat.) 

They see each other several more times over the next fortnight; but they exchange no more words, and Edrahil does not meet any of Celebrimbor's quick, almost reflexive glances. 

\---- 

"You smell like heat and smoke and burnt things," Edrahil says, with a touch of an edge on it. He's looked to be in a sort of pensive, odd mood all evening, ever since Celebrimbor encountered him coming from the annual ceremony one of his friends or cousins had held in honour of her brother, dead in the Bragollach. 

Celebrimbor only shrugs, though the movement, the space inside him, they are a little too tight. Stretched thin or clenched together, he cannot tell. "I haven't changed out of my work clothes." 

Edrahil threads his fingers through the curls of Celebrimbor's dark hair, near the curve of the back of his skull, above where they are pulled into a loose twist of braids. He can feel ghosts of those fingers against his skin. "Is that what it was like at Losgar?" 

His skin is a livid sort of pale. 

The smell is not what Celebrimbor remembers; it is the heat, and the light, the light of a hundred trees screaming their fury and defiance and rage against the darkness about to swallow them up, drowning the light of the stars high above like insignificant pinpricks with white-orange radiance and towering clouds of ash. It is the sounds, the crackling that grows louder in his ears and cacophonous shouts; triumph, anger, desperation, madness; the shrieks of panic and agony in his ears and splintering wood at his feet, mingled with blood sticky and boiling and red, red hair. 

( _Remember what uncle Moryo said_ , he has often reminded himself. _You were not there. It is a dream. It is just a dream, it is nothing real._ ) 

The pounding in his heart his there though, and the claustrophobic sense of unrealness that comes when he looks at the walls around him. 

But that is not where he remembers the smell of heat and smoke from. That, he remembers from the forge, and the forge is a good place. A place where he can make things, beautiful things, and shush the ever-present muttering, rambling, at the back of his mind. 

"No, it's not like Losgar." 

Edrahil's face is unreadable when he chances a glimpse at it. And then it grows even more so. "Did I hurt you?" Edrahil asks after a moment, but something seems wrong and it tastes bitter and sour and more like an accusation than a question. 

Celebrimbor cannot recall when the hand disappeared from his hair, but he wants it back, and he wants the feel of his heartbeat slowing to a steady beat against another's warm chest. 

"No," he says, reassurance-style too fast, "no, I'm fine.” 

He wonders if it’s the wrong thing to say. 

\---- 

“My brother would have been impressed,” says Edrahil, when Celebrimbor shows him the jeweled headdress he’d been commissioned for. “He studied techniques for working with precious stones.” 

Celebrimbor can feel his face growing hot, though he had never met Edrahil’s brother to know what such praise might mean. (And never would.) 

“There are a lot of flaws,” he says, somewhat dismissively, looking away. “The lady deserves better for her money… I’m surprised people are willing to commission us for personal pieces, and for so much. Rather than just the necessary weaponry. The name of the smith of an infantryman’s sword is hardly such a piece of pride…” 

Edrahil only raises an eyebrow, and cocks his head just briefly as though it were not much a consideration. “There are some things that sufficient skill will excuse, for enough people,” he says. 

He leans slightly past Celebrimbor to set the piece delicately back on the worktable. He hesitates though, it seems, when it comes to standing back up straight, hesitates in just a way to feel like he could be leaning against Celebrimbor with just a slight shift of his position. 

It feels as though the air is standing still when he slides through the spaces, reaching a shaking hand around to the nape of Edrahil’s neck and pulls him close. Steady, though not quite slow. Like waves reaching up to the highest line they make in the sand on the beach. Edrahil has one hand against his shoulder blade and the other at the curve of his hip, and it makes him a little warm and a little dizzy. 

He is not sure to what extent it could be considered something recurrent, or even something significant. But there is a certain continuity, nonetheless. 

\---- 

_A crown for Orodreth_ , was the gist of what he had said. (Celebrimbor does not remember the actual words.) 

A crown for Orodreth.


End file.
